The Tree of Grief has footholds, like stair steps.
The crowd did what it always did – it cheered. On this day, it cheered like opening night. Crowds have moods within moods, like people do. Sometimes joy is rageful joy, and sometimes it’s delirious, sometimes serene. The crowd cheered with the joy of relief, after a long off-season of waiting.
On the seventh floor, on the corner above the store, in a room with Him, sat Edmund Grimm. Edmund was not a saint, nor a sinner. He barely went out. His laundry was picked up, his groceries delivered. There was little need for interaction with the world. He didn’t even own a television. Edmund’s apartment …
I look in on you at least a couple times a day. You maybe look more busy, more tired, more harried. Sometimes you look like you’re in love with someone else. Sometimes you look lonely too, even if you’ve got a harem of lovers in there.
When my sister and I would go the Carnival Circus, we couldn’t tell our Dad, of course. “No jobs,” is what my Uncle Kevin used to say, whenever you’d ask him why we only had a few restaurants in town, and why we had to drive to Olderville to get groceries since the Piggly Wiggly …
A tongue is the most dangerous thing next to love. The Christians warn of the tongue devouring the speaker. The Hebrews say the steady, gentle pressure of a tongue breaks bone. And none of this comforted Jerald Parker, whose tongue was enormous by any standard estimation. When Jerry opened his mouth, girls cringed, so most …
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